DWELLING IN THE FOREST: NATURE, SOCIETY, AND POWER IN TRIBAL CENTRAL INDIA by Maya Ratnam A dissertation submitted to Johns Hopkins University in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Baltimore, Maryland October, 2017 © 2017 Maya Ratnam All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT This dissertation explores the lives of indigenous communities in India and their relationships to the environments and landscapes of their subsistence through an ethnography of the Baiga, a forest-dwelling, cultivator community who negotiate their everyday access to forests and land amidst shifting historical, legal and policy regimes of rights and access. Taking as its point of departure a particular conjuncture in Indian ecological history, the enactment of the Scheduled Tribes and other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act (2007), when forests and forest dwellers in their mutual entwinement come to be visible to the state and law, this dissertation asks: what does it means to dwell in a forest today, when dwelling is taken both as the daily work of making worlds more habitable, and the legal - governmental object of regulation and recognition? Each chapter explores a distinct threshold of being or becoming human in relation to an external world signalled as ‘nature,’ by tracking a particular aspect, trajectory, or predicament of Baiga subsistence and livelihood. The first chapter follows women into the forest as they gather forest produce, suggesting that people become perceiving organisms in the course of doing daily subsistence tasks and that perception itself is distributed rather than anchored in a perceiving subject. The second chapter considers the emergence of notions of self and other around questions of possession and property, exploring practices of land-making under conditions of land scarcity and the fluidity of state land categories, through a village land dispute. The third chapter shows how the Baiga were historically made into subjects of nature by examining debates around the colonial program for restricting shifting cultivation that cast the Baiga as wild, upland, unruly ‘forest-dwellers,’ in opposition to Gond as sedentary cultivators. The fourth and final chapter reengages the question of how Baigas are made into subjects of nature from ii a contemporary perspective, by examining how villagers make claims on the state, and the manner in which such acts of claiming bring their ‘bodily natures’ into the political domain. Thus, this dissertation tracks how contemporary Baiga selfhood and subjectivity are expressed in relation to their everyday environments of subsistence in the context of contemporary and historical vectors of state intervention in the lives and habitations of indigenous communities in India. Based on 22 months of fieldwork in a predominantly ‘tribal,’ ‘indigenous’ or ‘adivasi’ district of central India, the dissertation draws on close participant observation with farmers and forest dwellers, NGO activists and forest officials of the Baigachak region; interviews and conversations with Delhi-based environmentalists, activists, bureaucrats and journalists shaping national forest legislation; and select historical documents on the formation of the Baigachak as well as contemporary news coverage— local and national— of the Baiga and other forest-dwelling communities. Advisor: Anand Pandian Readers: Naveeda Khan Veena Das iii DEDICATION For my parents, Sudha and Seshadri Ratnam iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A work so long in the making has only been possible through the extraordinary and unconditional support of many. My teachers in anthropology at Johns Hopkins, Veena Das, Naveeda Khan and Anand Pandian, have left an indelible imprint on my thinking, writing, and mode of asking questions of the world through ethnography. They have stood by me and retained a lively interest in the work even though I wandered far. In the last year of writing, the thesis gained much from conversations with Deborah Poole, who brought a sharp ethnographic eye to bear upon questions of land and indigeneity. In Delhi, Deepak Mehta and Savyasaachi sent me into the forested thickets of anthropology, from which I have yet to emerge. For their consistent interest in my evolution as a person and a scholar, and their encouragement, I am grateful. Mahesh Rangarajan’s landmark ecological history of the Central Provinces has constituted a bulwark for scholars of the region; his consistent excitement about my fieldwork and encouragement from afar has infused confidence at moments where I was close to giving up. I have been lucky in the friendship and intellectual comradeship of many, anthropologists and others, at Hopkins and elsewhere. For laughs, tears, food, drinks, comments, conversations, parties, couches to crash on, and all manner of help and support, I thank Aditi Saraf, Hester Betlem, Caroline Block, Megha Sehdev, Andrew Brandel, Fouad Halbouni, Greg Sesek, Andrew Bush, Isaias Rojas-Peres, Pooja Satyogi, Chitra Venkatramani, Juan Felipe Moreno, Serra Hakyemez, Sidharthan Maunaguru, Aaron Goodfellow, Citlalli Reyes-Kipp, Arash Abazary, Mitra Ebrahimi, Ghazal Asif, Zehra Nabi, Sruti Chaganti, Neena Mahadev and Burge Abiral. Vaibhav Saria and Bican Polat have been fellow travellers, fierce friends, sharp critics, crisis-managers and interlocutors throughout this journey. Sarover Zaidi, M. Rajshekhar, and Ruchira Hantman are all the friends anyone could ever ask for; their humor, patience and wisdom has seen me through many difficult v times. Disha and Satyam gave me a home in D.C. where I could breathe, sleep, play, eat and cry; thank you for that. One can be transformed by fieldwork, or undone by it. To the Ekta Parishad community who made fieldwork possible when I knew nothing about the landscape of Madhya Pradesh or Dindori, I remain forever grateful. Jill Carr-Harriss, P.V. Rajagopal, Ravi, Nirbhay bhai and other activists welcomed me as a passive observer of meetings and trainings, and tolerated my fence-sitting attitude to their politics. To Shobha Tiwari, I can only express my deepest thanks for being such a rock of support and helping me find my feet in an unknown terrain. The inevitably unequal and complicated intimacies, friendships and generosities that make fieldwork possible leave me, to this day, humbled and awed. Saraswati, Kamalwati, Ramwati, Sukesh and Amol, the feisty and tireless field staff of Ekta Parishad, showed me round Samnapur and beyond, accompanied me on many trips to interior forest villages, took time out of their many preoccupations to explain details and inflections of local life and dialect, and allowed me to rest and recover in their homes when I was tired or ill. Sukhram Bhai and his family in Madagaur— Phulwati, Gondiya, Rampal, Gopal, Budhram, Aaji and Dadi made me a part of their home without question. With them, fieldwork was less work, more fun. The families of Mamta and Radha allowed me to live with them, kept me company on lonely evenings, fed me, and looked out for me. Balwant Rahangdale welcomed me as a researcher new to the Baigachak and shared his invaluable archive of memory, knowledge and documentation, unstintingly. Anil Garg, Shomona Khanna and Venkat Ramanujam shared extremely useful, (then) unpublished research documents. M. Rajshekhar shared insights on forests and ecology generously, alongwith his own exhaustive research materials on the FRA drafting process, clarifying many confusions. I am lucky to be a part of several homes and families. A lively extended clan of aunts, uncles and cousins has always let me know they are there for me, even as I reneged on family vi commitments and seldom called. I will try and be more deserving of their love and support. Pradeep Ratnam has been the best of brothers, a tireless supporter and cheerleader, ever present and ever cheerful. He has made many things possible. Mekhala Krishnamurthy has enlivened my life and mind with her friendship, the brilliance of her insights, and insistence on seeing anthropological fieldwork as profoundly urgent and relevant. Akhila has been a source of constant enchantment since her arrival in the world three years ago. Pavithra Ramesh has wondered at my having stuck to a project for so long, and insisted over innumerable WhatsApp and Skype calls, that I just ‘finish it’. Prithvi Ramesh has remained a solid presence in New York for many years, always letting me know that he is there. Sharada Ramanathan has cheered on this interminable effort from a distance, and imagined other futures beyond. Hema Ramanathan has inspired with her long career as a teacher, been a compassionate listener, supplied fried snacks at crucial moments, and devoted hours to editing and proof-reading the entire manuscript. To S. Muralidhar I am grateful for far more than I can express in words; he makes the world a better place in every sense of the term, and always lets me know that I have a place and home in it. Usha Ramanathan has nourished my life and mind from earlier than I can remember, in more ways than I can name, and continues to inspire by combining relentless intellectual rigor with a passion for social justice and unceasing curiosity. Her generosity in sharing her exhaustive understanding of issues relating to forest access, displacement, land issues and governance in tribal areas, has been unbounded. Despite many pressing commitments, her time, affection and attention have been mine for the asking. Ram, Tara, and Rani have, for many years, been nurturing and kind; I cannot think of home without them. Sakhi, I can take you on many more walks now. Prabhakar Rajan has supported and enabled this work in numerous ways and through many hard times and challenges; I hope that he now finds an easier path. My parents, Sudha and Seshdari Ratnam, have loved, prayed, fretted, delighted, waited, watched in bemusement vii at the twists and turns my life has taken, supported me nonetheless, and always, always, been there. To them, with love and gratitude, I dedicate this dissertation. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ii Acknowledgements v List of Figures x Introduction 1 1.